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Republican Lawmakers Across The Nation Are Attacking LGBTQ Rights

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In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis last month signed into law a bill that would prevent LGBTQ+ discussions in schools and will discourage classroom conversation about gender identity and sexual orientation in primary grade levels.

The measure, nicknamed by critics the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, drew condemnation from the Walt Disney Co., was labeled as “discriminatory” and “a form of bullying” by the White House, and prompted calls from some in the film industry to boycott making movies in Florida.

But Florida is just one of many states where Republicans have proposed measures aimed at curbing LGBTQ+ rights. In 2021 there was a flurry of anti-LGBTQ legislation, making it the worst year since 2015 for anti-LGBTQ legislation, according to the Human Rights Campaign. 

Last year, 17 anti-LGBTQ bills passed in state legislatures in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee and West Virginia.

“There’s no doubt that this (Florida law) is the tip of the iceberg at stripping away rights for LGBTQ people and for LGBTQ families,” said Darren Vance, executive director at Rainbow Families, a non-profit focused on supporting and educating the LQBTQ community in Washington. 

Vance is a part of the LGBTQ+ community, along with his 17-year-old son, who identifies as queer. He said the Florida statute is more destructive and far-reaching than many understand.

“Jumping to the most horrific end is it will increase LGBTQ youth suicide. Like that’s it, that’s the bottom line,” Vance said.

Congressional Republicans defended Florida’s new law.

“What I think we got to make sure our teachers are focused on (is) reading, writing, arithmetic and that’s what they ought to be doing,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Florida, told CNS.

But congressional Democrats said the Florida bill was too broad and could cause parents to file lawsuits. 

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, said that schools should provide a “productive, nurturing learning environment” for students regardless of their backgrounds, race, gender identity or sexual orientation.

“This bill not only isolates LGBTQ students but also denies all students comprehensive and inclusive education,” Van Hollen told CNS. “I will keep fighting to ensure schools are welcoming of all students, while working to pass the Equality Act to ensure LGBTQ Americans are afforded equal rights under the law.” 

The Equality Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, accommodations and education. It passed the House is February of last year but has not moved in the Senate.

Meanwhile, GOP efforts to curb LGBTQ+ rights continue to spread as the 2022 midterm elections approach.

In February, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, sent a directive to state health agencies stating that delivering gender-affirming medical treatments to transgender youths is considered child abuse under Texas law. The order requires medical professionals and teachers to report parents who aid their children in receiving this care.

The Biden administration may challenge Abbott’s directive.

“HHS will take immediate action if needed (in Texas),” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement last month. “I know that many youth and their supportive families are feeling scared and isolated because of these attacks. HHS is closely monitoring the situation in Texas, and will use every tool at our disposal to keep Texans safe.”

Meanwhile, some of the Republican Party’s candidates falsely are accusing Democrats of being part of an effort to “groom” young people to become gay or transgender.

In Michigan, Republican State Sen. Lana Theis attacked Democratic State Sen. Mallory McMorrow in a fundraising letter, claiming that the latter wanted to “groom and sexualize kindergarteners.”

McMorrow’s outraged response delivered in the Michigan Senate has gone viral.

“Call me whatever you want. I know who I am,” the Democrat said. “I know what faith and service mean, and what it calls for in this moment. We will not let hate win.”

Cathryn Oakley, the state legislative director and senior counsel at the Human Rights Campaign, said she has seen an increase in anti-LQBTQ+ legislation in the past few years. 

“You know, legislation often moves in sort of trends around the country,” Oakley said. “And part of that is because the vast majority of the anti-LGBTQ legislation that is introduced in state legislatures comes from the same sources.”

Tania Cordova, an advocate for Casa Ruby, the only LGBTQ bilingual and multicultural organization in Washington, knows what it means to be discriminated against due to a lack of resources, Cordova said. 

“I think that when I was a kid, I couldn’t express myself because there was not education about gender identity. And I mean, who’s going to determine how you’re going to identify yourself?” Cordova said. 

Cordova said she now empowers children who may not be able to empower themselves.   

“We feel suffering from oppression and discrimination, but at least now we have to empower ourselves to be the advocates for those little ones who sometimes don’t have the voice to defend themselves,” Cordova said.

Written by Devin Rank and Julia Rosier, Capital News Service. Photo by Cecilie Johnsen on Unsplash.

Burger King Takes A Shot At Chick-Fil-A By Donating Chicken Sandwich Profits To HRC

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The chicken sandwich wars are really heating up out there. Popeyes was just the beginning; now Burger King will spend Pride month donating profits from its new chicken sandwich to Human Rights Campaign.

Burger King’s announcement last week that they would donate 40 cents to Human Rights Campaign for each of their new Ch’King sandwiches sold during June, aka LGBTQ Pride Month, was cool and classy enough in and of itself. But the fact that they embedded multiple shots at Chick-Fil-A within the text of the announcement tweet really made the whole thing delicious.

You all know the context for this one: Chick-Fil-A, who’ve long claimed to be the inventors of the chicken sandwich, are a family-owned national fast food chain who put their Christian values front and center, from closing on Sundays to donating large amounts of their substantial profits to religious missionary groups. In 2012, at the height of the battle over marriage equality, the Muppets pulled out of a promotional tie-in with Chick-Fil-A after the restaurant’s chief executive, Dan Cathy, made a number of public statements opposing marriage equality.

This led to a wave of negative publicity for the fast food chain, but the backlash was quickly countered by “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day,” an event organized by former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, in which massive amounts of anti-LGBTQ conservatives and hard-right Republicans flooded their local Chick-Fil-A to show their support for opposing marriage equality. And the conservative love affair with Chick-Fil-A has continued ever since, even as Chick-Fil-A continued to support anti-LGBTQ non-profits with their dollars for nearly another decade, finally ending the donations last year in what the company insisted was not a response to backlash but simply a change in focus for their charitable giving.

At some point, Chick-Fil-A’s many competitors in the fast food world apparently got sick of seeing long lines and full parking lots outside one of their main rivals’ locations. Popeyes kicked off what have come to be known as “the chicken sandwich wars” by launching a rival chicken sandwich in 2019. That sandwich was so popular that the company, having planned for significantly slower sales, ran out of the ingredients for the sandwich within a few weeks of introducing it, and had to wait nearly two months to return it to market. Since then, the sandwich has remained popular, and Popeyes drive-thru lines, at least here in the Richmond area, are now often as long as Chick-Fil-A’s.

In the last year or so, the temperature has been further raised on the chicken sandwich wars, as everyone from McDonalds and Burger King to Zaxby’s and Taco Bell has introduced their own chicken sandwich, all of which are obviously modeled on the Chick-Fil-A/Popeyes template. And with their announcement last week, Burger King made the chicken sandwich wars hotter than ever.

“The #ChKing says LGBTQ rights!” is how the tweet announcing the King’s month-long donation campaign began. It referred to the time period during which the donations would take place as “#pride month,” and went on to parenthetically mention that the donations to HRC would occur “even on Sundays,” an aside accompanied by the side-eye emoji; there’s really no way to interpret that as anything other than a dig at Chick-Fil-A.

“This is a community we love dearly and have proudly supported over the years,” said a Burger King spokesperson in an interview with USA Today, “so we couldn’t miss an opportunity to take action and help shine a light on the important conversation happening.” That may very well be the case — and we do applaud it — but the fact that this will help BK sell some chicken sandwiches is undoubtedly at least some of the motivation.

Really, though, I’m not complaining at all about that. It’s better than selling sandwiches by broadcasting your hate and intolerance — something Chick-Fil-A have been doing for a decade now. And hey, I’ve actually had the Burger King Ch’King sandwich already, and it’s quite good; the horseradish sauce it comes with distinguishes it from other entrants in the chicken sandwich wars and gives it a tasty kick. While its caloric content might test the limits of your diet, you can probably afford to cheat a little bit if it’s for a good (and delicious) cause. Just sayin.

Top Photo via Burger King

Montana GOP Lawmakers Pass Discriminatory Anti-LGBTQ ‘Religious Freedom’ Bill

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More states are getting on the “religious freedom as excuse for anti-LGBTQ discrimination” train, driven by their Republican state legislatures and governors. The latest to jump on board is Montana.

Lawmakers in the Montana House and Senate have passed a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” bill that will allow any person or business to discriminate against anyone for any reason if not doing so would violate their religious beliefs.

House Democrats supported an amendment that would not allow the law to be used to discriminate but Republicans refused to support it.

“Do not make me NOT do what my God tells me I have to do,” Republican Rep. John Fuller, opposing the amendment, said during Thursday’s debate, the AP reports.

“The LGBTQ community opposes the bill, arguing it could lead to challenges against ordinances in several cities that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression,” the AP adds. “The Montana Human Rights Act does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”

The Human Rights Campaign says the bill is “similar” to the “religious freedom” bill then-Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed into law, causing nationwide outrage.

“This bill is so sweeping and so dangerous that under it, LGBTQ Montanans could be denied access to PREP and PEP and other life-saving medications by pharmacies,” HRC said via Twitter.

News outlets are falsely comparing the Montana legislation to the federal law of the same name. The federal law does not affix personhood status to corporations, organizations, or businesses, and does not directly support anti-LGBT discrimination – the Montana law does, stating:

“Person” means any individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, religious institution, estate, trust, foundation, or other legal entity.

Democrats tried to stop the bill’s passage but were unsuccessful.

“This bill would allow a family therapist to refuse to help an unwed mother. It would allow a pharmacist to refuse to prescribe HIV medications or oral contraceptive pills,” said state Democratic Rep. Laurie Bishop, Montana Free Press reports. “I just ask you, that as you consider this legislation, that you’d not only think about that which you want to protect, I understand that, but rather, I ask you to consider how others might use this legislation in ways that you do not intend.”

Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte (photo) is expected to sign the bill into law.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM.

Trump Political Appointee Sues Biden After Refusing to Resign

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Roger Severino, the anti-LGBTQ right-wing Christian activist who made things difficult for LGBTQ Americans during his time running HHS’s Office Of Civil Rights for Trump, is suing the Biden administration for firing him.

Roger Severino, a former Trump appointee at the Dept. of Health and Human Services who targeted LGBTQ Americans in his religious crusade as head of the Office of Civil Rights, is suing the Biden administration for firing him from his appointment by the former president to an obscure but powerful federal government agency known as ACUS.

He is refusing to resign, despite being a political appointee.

“President Biden’s attempt to remove me contrary to law exposes his lofty promises of healing and uniting all Americans as nothing more than cynical manipulation,” Severino defiantly told Newsweek.

“Because I am not one to be bullied, not even by the President himself, I will not resign my duly commissioned post and look forward to seeing how President Biden tries to justify his vindictive actions in court.”

Severino’s lawsuit claims that “President Biden has no constitutional authority under Article II to terminate Mr. Severino’s appointment to the Council.”

“The Council” is the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), which holds sway over how U.S. government regulatory agencies operate.

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts and the law, writes on Twitter that “Severino’s substantive argument … seems to suggest that ACUS is part of no branch of government, but instead sits outside the executive branch on some heavenly plane.”

He calls the lawsuit “bonkers, BONKERS, just eye-melting galaxy-brain-level drivel.”

Severino spent his four years in the Trump administration working tirelessly to kill protections, many installed by the Obama administration, for LGBTQ patients, effectively promoting discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation. He also expanded opportunities for people of faith to claim anti-religion discrimination by creating the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division at HHS.

At HHS Severino called Obama-era protections for transgender patients “unnecessary.”

And in defending an anti-LGBTQ “religious freedom” regulation, Severino told reporters, “Patients want doctors who match their values.”

As NCRM has previously reported, Severino has been called a “radical” anti-LGBTQ religious right activist by the Human Rights Campaign. He once served as CEO and counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a religious right non-profit that opposes separation of church and state. He has also served as the Director of the DeVos family’s Center for Religion and Civil Society in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity.

He is married to Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, which spent millions to install President Donald Trump’s extremist judges, including reportedly tens of millions of dollars to help secure Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM.

Franklin Graham Launches ‘Religious Freedom’ Attack on ‘Godless, Secular Agenda’ of ‘Sinful’ LGBTQ Voters

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A lot of shrill voices on the right can’t handle the fact that Donald Trump lost the presidential election; if you ask anti-LGBTQ preacher Franklin Graham, Trump’s loss should be blamed on the LGBTQ community.

Franklin Graham unleashed a vitriolic attack against “sinful,” and “extremely dangerous” LGBTQ Democratic voters over the weekend, striking out in apparent rage after it became quite clear that Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States. Graham, who is an unofficial advisor to President Donald Trump and wholly supports him, vented his anger at his favorite target.

“LGBTQ activists within the Democratic Party are pushing their godless, secular agenda with a potential Biden Administration,” Graham declared on Facebook, pointing to a Christian Post article Saturday night.

“If you don’t conform to their ideology, agree with their sinful beliefs, teach what they say is right, they want to close you down,” he said of LGBTQ people, ignoring that the religious right literally created “cancel culture.”

“They will pressure and bully politicians to get their way. It is extremely dangerous if they are permitted to proceed unchecked. If they are allowed free reign, they will go after the accreditation of Christian colleges, then Christian ministries and churches next, to strip them of tax-exempt status and try to force them to operate under policies that go against biblical teaching.”

Graham runs a Christian “ministry,” and any rescission of tax breaks for religious institutions would greatly hurt Graham’s bottom line.

“This is not only an attack on free speech and expression, but also an attack on our religious liberty. The presidential election isn’t finalized yet,” he says, feeding Trump’s lies about the election, “but this shows why who we vote for is so important. We’ve had four years of an administration under President Donald J. Trump that staunchly defends religious freedom, freedom of speech, and the church. We can see that the one who holds the office of President of the United States has tremendous ramifications on our day-to-day lives and for the future of this nation.”

Graham seems to have been set off by the Human Right Campaign’s “Blueprint 2020,” which, in part calls for a Biden Dept. of Education to ensure religious institutions are not allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ people.

The Trump Dept.of Education, under Secretary Betsy DeVos, became a tool to attack LGBTQ students, students of color, the handicapped, and other minority children.

Graham is literally arguing for the “right” of government-accredited schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students and faculty.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM

LGBTQ Groups Celebrate Passage of ‘Historic’ Virginia Values Act

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After years of struggling, advocates for Virginia’s LGBTQ community have received a clear victory, as the Virginia Values Act passes both houses of the General Assembly.

Legislators wore rainbow, heart-shaped stickers Thursday as the House and Senate passed the Virginia Values Act. LGBTQ advocacy groups and lawmakers held a press conference in anticipation of what they called, “a historic moment after a years-long battle.”

Senate Bill 868, patroned by Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, and House Bill 1663, patroned by Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax, will amend existing nondiscrimination laws to extend protection to LGBTQ residents in housing, employment and places of public accommodation. 

“Today we took another giant step along the path towards a more equal and just Virginia,” Sickles said in a statement.

Speakers at the event included the chief patrons of the bills and chief co-patron Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax, as well as representatives from LGBTQ organizations such as the Virginia Values Coalition, Equality Virginia, the Human Rights Campaign, and the National Center for Transgender Equality and Freedom for All Americans.

“Today, history was made in Virginia, and LGBTQ Virginians are one step closer to being protected from discrimination simply because of who they are or whom they love,” said HRC President Alphonso David.

James Parrish, director at Virginia Values Coalition, speaks at a press conference ahead of the Virginia Values Act passage. (Photo: Screengrab from press conference, via VCU-CNS)

Virginia will be the first Southern state to pass nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ residents, as well as the first state in over a decade to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to existing laws of nondiscrimination protections, according to a HRC media release.

“This isn’t a theoretical issue, discrimination is happening today,” Ebbin said in a press release. “Until we shine a light on this issue, until we drive it out of our state, Virginians will continue to suffer the psychological, physical and economic vandalism simply because of who they are or who they love.”

Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, House of Delegates Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, and Gov. Ralph Northam have pledged their support for the legislation. 

“We are going to officially end discrimination in the commonwealth of Virginia this year,” Northam said during an Equality Virginia reception Tuesday.

Written by Emma Gauthier, Capital News Service. Top Photo: A rainbow flag was raised on Sept. 23 along with a trans flag and the Philly Pride Flag for Richmond Pride. (Photo from City of Richmond Flickr account)